The Wildly Eclectic Me

Okay, it's very strange how you can be going one way and out of the blue one of your characters just decides to take off on their own little tangent. One of mine decided to single-handedly rewrite the story of King Arthur last night. I'm not sure that I agree with what she did but hey what can you do when you're characters take over your writing.

Okay I'm doing some research and I found interesting stuff about games that Vikings play so of course I had to share! First of all there is the lovely game of Hnefatafl . I'm sure someone out there can pronounce that! I'm fluent in Danish, which is a Nordic language, and I couldn't even venture a guess! Hnefatafl is a game similar to Chess but according to some of the sites I found on it, it's actually older. There are pieces and its played on a board with a grid. The pieces simulate a Viking Raid so there are pieces in the middle which someone is in charge of defending and four sets of pieces along the outside which someone else attacks with. Those good old Vikings! Surround and conquer! Another game I found was Kubb I couldn't find anything but commercial websites about it so for all I know someone totally could have made it up just to make money, but according to their site its an outdoor game played by Vikings. Its a little like bowling or horsesho...

Ever have those days when it seems like you do nothing but work and when you're done you've accomplished virtually nothing! I hate those days!!! They make me want to pull my hair out! I did get several things marked off my To Do list though so I guess I must be accomplishing something. Last night I got a few pages writen and I was having a bit of writers block. I hadn't written anything really since the in- laws were here. I hate when I get out of the swing and its tough to get back in. I wanna finish the scene tonight if I can. That will of course depend on my baby bear. We shall see. Well back to real work now!

I'm doing some research for a scene I'm writing for Arrianna where the people of Sithein go and visit the dragon's for Yule. So I was looking up Ancient Viking Yule traditions and I'm finding some freaky stuff! Like for instance... The Yule Cat was a giant cat that came and ate people who were lazy and didn't get their work weaving done! Now if you ask me that's just freaky! Now back to work!

Upon further cleaning up of my rose bed. I discovered one more poor pitiful rose clinging to life in the thigh high weeds. I managed to get all the weeds out of there and treated the rocks lining the outside of the bed with roundup and fertilized and treated the roses with something to kill bugs and rust. Hopefully they will appreciate my efforts and survive. Actually I think one of the roses might actually be a wild rose that sprouted out of the root. We'll see if its actually still a hybrid tea whenever it manages to bloom. Poor roses!

I planted a flower bed early this summer and then laid down mulch...I thought that meant that the weeds wouldn't grow back. How wrong I was! I didn't know that you had to lay down some kind of cloth down t keep the weeds from coming through!!! So Nicky kept me busy pretty much ALL summer and I ignored my poor flower bed until today. I went after it with the weed eater and my hands. Should have worn gloves too! I'm gonna regret that tommorrow. After I used up all the battery my sad little weed eater could give I started yanking weeds. I discovered that all but three of the poor roses I planted this spring (I think there were about 8) died. And one little sad Mr. Lincoln (red) rose was just clinging on to life despite having become food to whatever lived in that grass! I did as much as I could before Nicky started screaming. For some reason he gets just horrified when I'm outside and he can hear either the weed eater or the lawn mower. I think he thinks they are ...

Wow! I'd forgotten how really strangely my mind works when I'm writing. Like it keeps writing even though I'm not actually trying to. It doesn't do it when I'm editing just writing. I've written about 20 pages of Arrianna in the last few days, which is more than I've written in ages and actually enjoyed it. Seems like when I was getting my creative writing degree it was more work than pleasure. That on top of the fact that I passionately hate writing short fiction and knew they were going to just tear it apart anyway cause it wasn't all angsty and drug-filled. Well most of it wasn't. It's wonderful to be back in familiar worlds that I enjoy writing about. Its just that... Well the world follows me out of the book to be quite frank. I was driving home from the Applefest this weekend and the trees on the mountains were just starting to change and I was thinking. "Jeez, it's pretty but its going to take forever to get over that mo...

O Lord! It's hard to be humble. When you're perfect in everyway. I can't wait to look in the mirror. I get better lookin' each day. To know me is to love me. I must be one heck of a fan. Oh, lord! It's hard to be humble. When you're an Arkansas Razorback Fan! GO HOGS!!! Okay I'm better now! We had a great game today so I'm still excited! We beat number two in the nation, Auburn! Yay us!!! And we didn't just beat them! We beat them soundly! After the game we went to Applefest and then to a party for work. So it's been a darn busy day! I'm just settled down now to do some writing. That is if Nicky stays asleep so that I can. He was pretty tuckered out from all of the partying. Back to working on Arrianna. I'm writing a fight scene and those always make me slightly uncomfortable. I don't fight...well not ussually...So its kinda difficult. Hmmm...I don't drink blood either. Why does it not bug me to write those scenes. ...

First the Vampire Goodies! As a way of clearing my palate from my Dana revisions to prepare my self for the absolute final after that I'm sending you to the publisher revisions, I've been reading the next book that comes after Dana. Click Me for a teaser of Arrianna Penndragon. It’s not quite finished yet and it’s been a LONG time since I've worked on it so I was trying to get in the mood to finish the outline. I'm totally digging it. I can't stop reading when I'm supposed to be going to sleep. Arrogant? It's not meant to be...but I just love vampire stories! Especially right now cause I'm totally Dragon saturated. There are dragons in this one too though. They do a great deal of interacting in these stories. So on to Pass Your Plate ... Lishy and I went to this store, where they have all the ingredients and everything ready for you and you put together meals that you can take home and freeze. We did the Split 10 deal and got a free meal beca...